It was Friday night football in Pine Plains, with the Bombers facing the Onteora Eagles: The exciting game ended with an overtime loss, 42-36, for the Pine Plains/Rhinebeck team, but it was still a spirited and chilly Senior Night.
Posters of the Class of 2024 players hung at the front of the stands, shirts with their names could be seen on fans and parents escorted their sons to the field as their names were announced in a pre-game ceremony.
Bev Platt, the president of the Bomber Boosters, a club whose mission is creating an environment that inspires student athletes, was nearby working the grill at the concession stand. The kiosk is a profit maker for the Bomber Boosters and is staffed by both Booster and student volunteers. Leonardo J. Deanda Jr., a senior class member, was spending his second night this week selling food and drink to the many Bomber supporters in attendance. He did earn scholastic community service credit for the time, but Deanda said he was really doing it for his economics class. Sausage and peppers, hamburgers, hot dogs, soda and hot cocoa served and warmed the all-ages crowd, and the Bomber Boosters made some money. Having worked at the stand two nights before, Deanda cheerily described how the end of the night surplus of hot dogs had been offered up and a swarm of hungry athletes descended upon them.
The Bomber Booster Club started in the fall of 1975, with Earl McCauley as president, to stimulate interest and community involvement for all athletic programs at Stissing Mountain Jr./Sr. High School. The school offered the group a place to build a concession stand next to the field when two aging school buses, that had been serving as a shelter and a snack bar, had to be removed as insurance hazards. The shed was “something we always wanted to do,” said Booster Tootsie Brescia in an article in the Register Herald at the time.
In June 1976, funding for several sports programs was eliminated in the Pine Plains Central School District’s proposed austerity budget. Petitions were circulated but voters roundly rejected the consequent ballot referendum to restore the money. The Bomber Boosters stepped in to raise the funds needed to support football, winter track and girls’ tennis for the 1976-77 budget year. They’ve continued to provide aid to student athletes across all programs ever since.
A current fundraiser, spearheaded by Amy Benack-Baden, is the sale of a blue-and-white Pine Plains Bombers umbrella to help the 2024 varsity softball team travel to Myrtle Beach, S.C., for spring training. “Every sports parent can relate to standing in the rain, at a game, watching their child play and wishing they had an umbrella,” Benack-Baden said. The softball team members, including Benack-Baden’s daughter, Eliza, and their parents are working together on multiple fundraisers so that all the players will be able to go on the trip. The money from the umbrella sales at Customink goes directly to the Bomber Boosters, which is incorporated as a not-for-profit organization, and will be paid out by the club for the spring softball trip.
The largest part of the Bomber Boosters’ funding still comes in donations from across the community by those interested in school sports. Sometimes the group has been given money from graduating classes; recently, the Class of 1973 sent them a gift.
The Boosters provide support to student athletes in many, various ways. They fund team trips to training clinics, pay for insurance that allows coaches to use buildings out of season, buy trophies, supply aid to students who may need financial help to participate in sports and they give $100 to every graduating athlete and buy each one a Pine Plains Bomber T-shirt.
The Boosters have upgraded the concession stand over the years and it continues to make money. Kate Osofsky, the vice president of the Boosters, suggests working the snack bar as an enjoyable way for a senior class member to fulfill their community service requirement. During a football game, the stand needs three or four students to help, and it is only a two-hour commitment, she said. (Getting a spot on the snack bar schedule is easy — sign up here.)
Platt and Osofsky are ready to hand over the reins to parents who have student athletes still in school. Platt’s son, Trevor, who played football and participated in winter and spring track, graduated in 2019; Osofsky’s daughters, Claire and Sadie, graduated in 2018 and 2021 – both played field hockey and ran spring track. The Booster leaders send out a call to “every parent who has a child in athletics.”
They also ask everyone to follow the Bomber Boosters on Facebook and Instagram.